


Security Breach

by Anonymous



Category: Mean Girls (2004), Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Add more tags later as needed, Alternate Universe - Among Us (Video Game) Setting, Among Us AU UwU, But I'm not very good at it, F/F, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Lack of Communication, Not Beta Read, The Skeld (Among Us), They suspect each other, Unreliable Narrator, just like in game, some narrators will actively lie to you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:14:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27026425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Skeld 8B-03 shuts its engines off in the middle of nowhere in space for repairs. But the alarm sounds and tragedy strikes fast and hard. Someone is found, but they’re all accounted for. Someone is lying, but no one can tell who. Someone is trying to tell the truth, but no one can be trusted. In the uncertainty of their situation, only one thing is for sure:Something got into the ship.
Relationships: Cady Heron/Aaron Samuels, Karen Smith/Gretchen Wieners, Regina George/Janis Sarkisian
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Tasks Completed: 0%

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So it begins

They’d stopped the Skeld in the middle of space where the chances of getting hit by something were small to none. After a rough trip through a debris field 2 sectors ago, they needed to take a break and fix whatever damage had been dealt on the ship. The nearest human inhabited planet that could properly repair it was still about 2 days off if they managed to make temporary fixes, maybe up to a week if they pushed the ship to breaking without touching anything.

Some of the crew had split up to try and fix the hardest problems in their primary stations. Janis didn’t know exactly where the others were, but she knew Regina was stuck in the MedBay after getting thoroughly beaten up by the ship during the debris field. After helping her with the scanner and showing her where the medical supplies were, Janis headed out to check up on the security cameras. There were three down, but it wasn’t anything they could fix right now. She made a note of it and started cleaning up the room.

Aaron called over the comms for someone to help with the situation in the storage hangar and Janis went over. The room was a mess. Somehow, the straps holding the cargo down to the floor had come undone, the barrels had rolled across the room, and the containers of fuel were scattered around. Thankfully, nothing spilled out, especially the fuel. Fire hazards from fuel leakages took hours to clean up.

After Janis and Aaron finished tying everything back down in the storage hangar securing the barrels and fuel containers to the wall, they headed to the cafeteria for a snack. Karen made a brief appearance to say hello and took a juice box back with her before leaving.

In the middle of Janis and Aaron’s snack break, a door opened somewhere. One of the alarms blared, the one for when a door or hatch opened up into space, a potential security or safety breach that compromised everyone’s wellbeing on board. Before either of them could get up off their seat, the situation solved itself and neither of them thought anything more of it. Random doors in the ship had been opening and closing because of the wires coming loose, one of the doors to the outside was bound to have been affected.

In the next few minutes, while enjoying her snack bar and juice box, Janis noticed a few things happening, blissfully unaware of the absolute nightmare about to ensue.

Shane popped by to take an apple, made a joke about target practice in the debris field then left.

Regina called over the comms for someone to get her something to eat, still stuck in the MedBay.

Commander Norbury told her not to use the comms for things like that.

Captain Duvall called over comms for someone to get him a bottle of water.

Aaron was about to get up for the captain’s request when Cady screamed over the comms in hysterics. No one could understand anything she said over her panicked breathing and talking. Damian tried to calm her down. Finally, after a deep breath and some silence, everyone understood her.

“Storage.

Someone’s dead.”

Janis and Aaron shared a look and bolted to the storage hangar, Shane following closely behind, Commander Norbury coming out from the Administration room ahead of them. Before they even entered, Damian, Gretchen and Karen were already running away screaming. Shane and the commander pushed past them and entered but Janis and Aaron paused at the door.

They’d just been in there, trying their best to get the cargo together, and now there was a dead body. It could have been either of them if they hadn’t done their job fast enough. Did something fall or snap off the piles? Did the storage doors open and some poor soul had the misfortune of getting cut in half when they shut it?

It wasn’t long before they heard Shane curse and run out of the room, screaming into the comms for the captain not to come down and for Regina to stay where she was. Whatever was in there, it freaked out Shane, and that was more than enough additional cause for their concerns.

She and Aaron walked in slowly, taking the long way around the cargo they’d just tied down a few minutes ago. Janis looked around but didn’t notice anything dislodged from the piles, the cloth they’d used to cover one of the heaps had been ruffled substantially, however. The only way it could have been moved so much was if the storage doors opened. It was probably what the alarms were going off for earlier.

Some of the lights flickered overhead, Janis grimaced. They were still busted. Cady must have come over from Electrical to fix things when she heard the doors open and close. It’s how she saw the body.

As soon as they reached the end of the hangar, they saw Cady pressed up against the corner. Whatever hysterics she may have been earlier was gone, and she was just sitting there silently crying with a look of horror on her face. Commander Norbury was with her, trying to talk her into getting out of the room, but her back was to whatever Cady was looking at. Aaron took a few steps forward, going to comfort his girlfriend, but he paused and glanced at the wall closest to the hatch. A similar look of horror washed across his face and he stumbled back, nearly tripping on his own feet, but he didn’t look away. Janis made the mistake of looking at whatever the couple were staring at.

It was the body alright. **_WAS_**.

Janis turned around before she could fully register what she’d seen, trying to get the sight out of her head. It **_was_** a body, beaten and mangled beyond recognition as it was. Something had stripped it of any identifiable features, bitten the head and limbs off. Chunks of flesh were scattered all over the control panel like someone had blown it off with a gun, blood spread across the steel floors, getting stuck between the panels. A body shouldn’t ever look that red, like it’d been badly skinned. There shouldn’t be pieces of bone sticking out of the body or peering out from under torn muscle and sinew.

A dead body on board was one thing. This was entirely different.

The emergency meeting alarm startled everyone, Captain Duvall had called to meet at the cafeteria for attendance and incidence report, for an attempt to figure out who was still around and what happened. Janis heard the commander shakily order everyone out of the room. None of the three needed to be told twice.

Aaron helped Cady up to her feet and they silently made their way back to the cafeteria. None of them said anything, Cady just stared at the trail of blood her boots left as she walked, Aaron was just helping her along. Janis didn’t hear the commander behind her.

Everyone was in the cafeteria already, waiting for them. Damian, Karen and Gretchen were huddled together for comfort on one side of the central table. Shane was sitting with Regina on the left table closest to the entrance, and Captain Duvall was standing by the hall on the right swiping through his master controls tablet.

“Take a seat.” He gestured to the table on the right nearest to the three of them. “Where’s Commander Norbury?”

Janis shrugged while the other two took their seats. “She could still be in the storage room.”

The Captain frowned, reaching up to turn on his communicator. “Commander, confirm your location.”

“Storage hangar, sir.” The commander’s voice was distorted over comms, but it was clear enough to understand her.

“I called a meeting. What are you still doing there?”

“I was trying to figure out what happened, sir.”

“Get over here, that’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

In a minute, Commander Norbury was in the room trailing blood with her boots. The Captain stared at it for a moment but didn’t acknowledge it further, and started going over attendance.

Janis reached up to rub the blurriness out of her eyes away only to notice that her glove was wet and she’d been crying. Aaron handed her a tissue from the table, his eyes were red too, but he was offering her the most comforting smile he could muster.

“That’s…” Captain Duvall trailed off, staring at his tablet before looking around the room. “Everyone is accounted for… That - that can’t be right.”

Everyone snapped to attention, looking at each other in fear and surprise. The silence of the crewmembers hung heavy in the air, the constant humming of the ship sounded louder than it had ever been. How could everyone be here?

There were only 10 crewmembers on routine delivery trips, it was all the command centers could afford to send out per Skeld model ship due to a recent shortage of manpower. There were only 10 people that boarded Skeld 8B-03. A dead body was found in the storage room. There’s **_still_** 10 people on board when there _should_ be 9.

“Let’s do that again. When I say your name, answer.” The Captain took a deep breath, tapping through his tablet again as he started calling on people.

“Commander Norbury, Sharon.” “Sir.”

“George, Regina.” “Sir.”

“Heron, Cady.” “Sir.”

One by one, Captain Duvall called on them. One by one, the crewmembers answered. The repeat attendance taking only served to make everyone more nervous, accentuated by the Captain’s silence after everyone had somehow been accounted for. The crew, grouping themselves by tables, eyed each other. They could only go by what they knew, and what they knew was the people of their table were only ones they saw and could vouch for. Someone in the outgroup wasn’t one of them.

Regina said what no one wanted to say. “An impostor got into the ship.”

Everyone flinched, Janis sure did. It was the unofficial cause of the manpower shortage. There were stacks of reports about entire crews falling to those _things_. Mira towers and laboratories found empty, inhabited by ghosts and their lifeless bodies. Skeld ships were found floating in space or crashing into planets with dead crews trapped inside. No one could definitively figure out what was going on.

At first, the reports were about the reactors malfunctioning. Every reactor at an important location had been replaced with the newest models, but it didn’t stop. Then it was blamed on the Oxygen Systems shutting down. They upgraded everything, and still people were dying. Whatever was killing them was getting more and more creative.

The first time that a crew had survived, it was from a Skeld ship. They reported about the Impostors that had mangled two of the crewmates and pretended to be part of the crew. When the recognizable bodies started showing up, they started ejecting people out of the ship in an attempt to save themselves. They ejected three people. The first one was a lucky guess on the part of the crew. The second one was an unfortunate mistake. The last one they ejected was one of the impostors. Someone had been in the Security room, watching the cameras when they saw the impostor kill one of the crewmembers. There were 4 people left in the end of it, and they managed to fly to the nearest planet and file their report.

Pretty soon, the story spread. There wasn’t a crewmember that didn’t know about it. Crews started surviving more and more, each telling the story of the Impostors getting into their locations and killing them off one by one. Sometimes there was just one, most of the time there were two, if they were particularly unlucky there were three.

There was only one thing in common with all the attacks from the Impostors: the locations they targeted were under repair. And right now, Skeld 8B-03 was a sitting duck; a perfect target. The alarm for the storage doors opening earlier was one of them coming in.

“Well,” Shane clapped his hands together once, “we’re dead.”

“Oman!” Captain Duvall chastised as the crew started panicking. “Everyone calm down! We can get through this, we just have to figure out who it is. Where were you when the doors opened?”

Regina raised her hand. “I was in the Medbay. I’ve even got logs in the system for a scan I did if you need proof.”

“I can vouch for that.” Janis added. “I was helping her with the scan, but that was before we stopped.”

“She was still there when I got to her earlier. I helped put the splint on her forearm.” Shane crossed his arms and leaned back against the table. “I was in Weapons. You can check the security cams, I didn’t leave the long way around. Janis and Aaron were in the cafeteria when I went in there for a snack, they saw me.”

The Captain nodded. “I was with Smith in Navigations. She left but came back, long before the alarm went off.”

“Yeah, she went through Weapons. Came back through with a juice box.” Shane supplied.

“Right,” Karen agreed, playing with her fingers on the table, “Janis and Aaron were here. Shane gave me his chocolate bar in Weapons. I peeked into O2 but no one was there so I went back into the Navigations with the Captain.”

That was six accounted for.

“I was in the Administration office.” Commander Norbury said. “You can check the security cameras. I only left when Cady called over the comms.”

Everyone turned to Cady at the mention of her name, she was the first one to see the body. Unfortunately, the camera watching the hallway to Electric had gone down and there was no way she could prove anything she had to say and no one could verify. Right now, she was the prime suspect.

“I was fixing what lights I could in Electrical. I didn’t hear anything over the wires sparking after the alarm sounded. I went to see if I could fix whatever wire came loose for the doors to open after I finished, but-” Cady choked on her own words and started crying again. Janis and Aaron could only do their best to comfort her, though they couldn’t vouch for her. They were aware of the possibility that the imposter could be Cady, but they couldn’t help but try to make her feel better.

Damian clicked his tongue, “I don’t know, Cady. That’s kind of suspect.” He looked pained that he had to be the one that said it. Janis could only send him a look of betrayal trying to tell him to stop talking with her eyes.

“How about before you throw allegations, you tell us where _you_ were, Damian.” Aaron sighed, doing his best to glare.

“Gretchen and I were in Communications. The Captain gave us orders to try sending a message out to a Mira tower,” Damian answered, “something is broken though. We can’t get a signal through.”

“The security cams to comms is down. And you got that order before the ship stopped,” Janis pointed out.

Damian flinched back, hurt. “Are you – Are you seriously accusing me right now?”

“You’re accusing Cady!”

“Yeah, but unlike her, I have someone that could vouch for me!”

“Enough!” Captain Duvall ordered, shutting down their exchange. “Accusing each other without any evidence is going to get us nowhere. Staying here and attracting more of them is going to get us killed faster. Before it gets to that, we have to fix the ship _today_ and get out of here as fast as we can. Now, I’ll assign-”

“Hey, wait,” Shane protested, standing up from his seat, “we’re going to go back to work?! We’re going to get killed if we leave this room-!”

“We are going to get killed if we stay here longer.” The Captain emphasized, glaring him down. “I would rather not have 3 or more of those things in here. If Impostors see the ship moving, they wouldn’t put in the effort to break in. Does anyone else have any complaints?”

Regina attempted to cross her arms, but hissed when the splint shifted. “I don’t have any constructive complaints, but this is bullshit. I already got fucking thrown around the engine rooms during the trip through the debris field back there, and now I have to work more? Great.”

Janis tried to send her a comforting smile from across the room. She’d been by the Reactor during the rough trip, making sure nothing went wrong, and she could hear Regina banging around the engine rooms, basically flying up and down the hallways to keep the engines aligned. At one point, Regina had clipped the walkway into the Reactor room and Janis was surprised Regina kept going with a dislocated shoulder.

“I’ll make sure to assign you the easier tasks.” Captain Duvall sighed, swiping through his tablet. “But you’ll have to check the engine alignment. You’re the only one that knows how to calibrate it.”

Regina groaned but didn’t say anything else.

“If there are no more complaints, your tasks have been assigned to you. If it’s a specialized task beyond your scope, call over comms for someone, otherwise it’s best not to talk.” The Captain tucked the tablet under his arm and properly addressed the room, his expression grim. “Remember to stay in groups. Finish your tasks. Try not to die.”

The crew shared looks of concern, already standing up to get started.

“Dismissed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone that liked the last Mean Girls Anon post :)  
> I thought to share this too
> 
> This doc was named "SUS" on my computer and I very nearly named this entire fic "Among Us AU UwU"


	2. Tasks Completed: 10%

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regina and Shane do a few tasks in the Cafeteria

“Dismissed.”

Regina rolled her eyes. The Captain could be so dramatic when he wanted to be, and while it was theatrically appropriate for the situation, it surely wasn’t appreciated.

The little phone in her utility belt beeped with the notification for her tasks, and she pulled it out to check which areas she’d generally be in. Thankfully, she didn’t need to travel anywhere near the front of the ship. There were far too many rooms to get locked up in. Though, she may have to go with Shane there are at some point. His primary station _was_ Weapons and he’d definitely have tasks that needed to be done there.

The crew started clearing out of the cafeteria once each group agreed on what to start with. The Captain and the Commander went through the hallway down to Storage. Damian, Gretchen and Karen left through the Weapons hallway. Janis, Aaron and Cady walked into the hallway leading to the back of the ship leaving Regina and Shane as the only ones still in the cafeteria.

“Mind if we stay here first?” Shane gestured to the rest of the room. “I gotta clean up and clear the trash chute.”

Regina went through her tasks again and sighed. “No, I have some wires to fix in here. Though I’d love to go to the MedBay for some painkillers after. I’m still a little fucked up.”

He nodded and went around cleaning up the room, humming some song she didn’t recognize. Regina meanwhile, trudged over to the maintenance panel to get started, grimacing at persistent ache in her leg when she started moving again.

When she pulled the cover off the wall, she was met with the absolute disaster inside. The disorganization of the wires and the haphazard directions they were all coming from looked like a textbook’s worth of regulatory violations. Some of the wires had so much slack they were sitting on the floor and stuck between the metal plates, but some looked like they were tense enough to snap with a good tug and it was a miracle they hadn’t yet. Just having to sort through them was a pain in the ass, much less try to figure out which ones were broken. For a minute, she actually considered taking off her glove and flailing her hand around until she felt a current.

Regina scowled. This was why she didn’t want to be one of the Electrical crewmates, their job _sucked_. Would it have killed the manufacturers of these ships to do at least a _little_ wire management? Someone was bound to get shocked to death at one point with how bad this situation was. And sure, the reactor and the engines she worked with were also certain death waiting to happen, but at least it was organized.

Eventually, she found the wires that snapped and taped them to the wall so she wouldn’t lose track of them. There were four that needed a fix as far as she could tell, two of which were for the lights and one for the door to the back of the ship. Worryingly, one of the other wires that broke, and the first one she fixed, connected the cafeteria control panel and the large windows. If that had malfunctioned somehow while they were all gathered around, everyone would have gotten blasted into space.

“Do you think it’s Cady?” Shane asked suddenly, quietly, from across the room, while still emptying the trash cans into the chute.

Regina shrugged, trying to not pull too much on the already tense wire for the door while she tried to fix it. “I don’t exactly trust anyone from the right side of the ship. Especially anyone that didn’t have to go through the cameras to get into storage.”

He hummed in agreement, opening the chute into the garbage compression chamber and waited for all of the trash to fall. “True, Cady’s totally suspicious.” After it was over with, he walked over to her, leaning on the wall to wait for her to finish. “But the Commander’s even more suspicious if you ask me.”

Regina stopped tugging on the wire after Shane made his remark. He seriously suspected Commander Norbury? But she was just in Administrations, wasn’t she? No one saw her leave except for when Cady called, and she even said they could check the security cams.

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” Shane started, leaning in to whisper gestured to Admin hallway, “she was late for the meeting, stayed down there even after the Captain gave her a direct order to come up. What was she doing?”

“But the cameras-”

Shane scoffed, “The cameras on this ship are shit, and she could be lying. Didn’t you hear her voice over the comms earlier? She was either fucking with the comms or hiding evidence on the corpse.”

Would it have been possible for the Commander to do that? Regina didn’t know the Commander much, she didn’t spend enough time in the front of the ship to get to know her and Regina usually wasn’t in the business of being friends with her commanding officers. Still, there was an inherent respect she had for people in positions of power. Could that be why she was so willing to accept the Commander’s declaration of innocence?

“Maybe, I haven’t thought about that.” Regina pulled on the tense wire in her hand a little more in an attempt to connect the two ends together.

Shane reached into the wall and held one end of the wire when he noticed her struggling to hold on to it. “Well hear me out a second, the Commander would totally rush to close the storage door, the Impostor would get her easy. And Cady was just unlucky. The other closest rooms to storage are Admin and Comms. I’m pretty sure Damian and Gretchen didn’t leave Comms or one of them would have said something, and the only other person that was alone was the Commander. Right now, the Impostor could either be her or Cady.”

She nodded along, “I’ll keep it in mind until someone that can play back the security footage confirms.”

That was a good proposition though, if Regina had to be honest. It lined up well with circumstance and a bit of logic. Between the shifty behavior and lack of a live witness, it was possible that the Commander was the Impostor the entire time and Cady just happened to be the unfortunate soul that stumbled across the evidence.

She finished up the wire, letting Shane pull his arm out of the wall, and continued to the other two which were mercifully easier to fix. All it took were a few cuts, stripping the wire and some electrical tape and it would hold up for a while. In fact, she probably used far too much tape to make sure they didn’t come undone. Shane continued on humming some other short tune to fill the silence, picking up the panel cover while she finished up the last wire fix. He stepped in to put the panel back when she was finished, slapping it once to make sure it was on right.

With the wires over and done with, Regina started towards the hallway to get to the MedBay. There was still an annoying ache in her right leg that made it difficult to walk around as quickly as she wanted to. The faster she got it numbed up at least, the faster she could finish her tasks and maybe take a well-deserved nap in the MedBay.

Before she could walk out of the Cafeteria, Shane caught her by the back of the iron neck rig on her uniform, where her helmet would attach if need be. “Hey, before we go, how about we eat something? You did say you wanted something to eat earlier, right?”

He started tugging her towards the table they were at during the meeting, leaving her to trudge backwards with him until the back of her knees hit the bench and she sat down. Had he not been a close friend, she would have given him a piece of her mind about dragging people around like that.

“Anything you want?” Shane walked up to the pantry in the wall and sorted through the snacks inside. “We still have some brownies and a fuck ton of dried seafood. Coffee’s all gone though.”

Regina raised a brow and spun in her seat to face the table. Guess she was going to have that snack now. “There’s an Impostor in the ship, in case you haven’t noticed. We have things to do.”

“Sure, we’ll get to it.” He waved it off, still pulling out random food and drink packets from the back to check what they were. “It’s better to die fed than it is to die hungry.”

“Shane, that sounds like something an Impostor might say before killing someone.” She remarked. “Just get me a brownie and a water bottle for now. I’ll have something else if I get hungry again later.”

He just laughed stiffly, picked up her choice of snacks and a peanut butter sandwich for himself, and shut the pantry doors with his shoulder. After he set the food down, the rest of their time eating was spent in tense silence. Regina eyed Shane as he stared down at the tabletop with a hollow look, idly chewing his sandwich.

The situation they were all in rattled him up more than Regina could hope to understand. Whatever was in storage that had him screaming wildly into the comms and rushing into the MedBay, obviously scared and worried, must have been straight out of something worse than a nightmare. She was lucky she didn’t have to see what was down there, but Shane certainly had and it understandably took a toll on him.

Quietly, she slid closer to him on the bench and leaned her knee against his, pointedly looking away from him as she did.

“Thanks, Regina.” Shane chuckled, gently nudging her in return. “I appreciate the sweet gesture, but save the romance for your girlfriend, yeah?”

“Oh shut up and let me be comforting.”

He chuckled again but didn’t say anything else, just continued on with his snack. The silence between them felt less oppressive than before. She supposed that he felt a little better now. As bad as Regina usually was with empathy, this was one situation she got right.

“By the way,” he started, “you wouldn’t happen to know how to work the MedBay scanner, would you?”

“Do I look like my primary is MedBay?”

Shane pouted, “I need to submit my scans and I don’t know how to use the scanning rig.”

Regina shot him a disapproving look. “Shouldn’t you have done that _before_ the trip?”

“They needed the extra hands and I was the only Weapons Primary at the station.” He shrugged, stealing her water bottle to wash down his food. “We can probably figure out how to work it, right?”

No.

They cannot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wrote this a while ago and I could not figure out why the vibe for this chapter was off   
> until I realized that Regina isn't as affected by the thing in Storage because she didn't see it


	3. Tasks Completed: 15%

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble in Security

The security room was dark and quiet when Janis, Cady and Aaron got there, but one punch to an already dented spot on the wall later and the lights weakly blinked on. “Well something definitely needs fixing in here,” Cady muttered, staying by the maintenance panel in the hallway wall, “aren’t you supposed to have a light switch?”

Janis shrugged, walking over to the security system to turn on the monitors, “Those haven’t worked in a long while. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a Skeld with functioning light switches.” She felt around the bottom of the monitor for the power button, fully expecting the glare of a screen turning on to assault her eyes. When that didn’t happen, Janis frowned and looked around the system, pressing the power buttons on the other monitors to check if something was wrong with the main one.

“Hey, you alright over there?” Aaron asked, sitting on the table nearby.

“I’m not sure.” Janis worried, pressing random buttons on the keyboard and flipping switches to elicit some error or warning that would make a sound to let her know that the system would _at least be working_. “Cady, did the power cord snap?”

“No, it’s perfectly fine,” Cady answered, poking her head around the corner, frowning when she saw the dark monitors. “Can you check the panel next to you to see if the power is on in the room?”

Janis turned to the wall and popped open the significantly smaller panel. She’d never had a reason to open this before and she’d never seen what was inside, but she got the general idea. On either side of a glass turn switch was a series of yellow LED lines, and a darker, mirrored pattern of it. Janis tentatively reached out to connect the circuit and the dimmed LED lines turned on, the room humming back to life.

The lights in the room brightened noticeably and Janis turned back to the system in time for the main monitor’s glare to perfectly blast her eyes with a brilliant flash of white light. Even Aaron startled from his seat.

“Can that monitor _get_ any brighter?” He grumbled, squinting at the screen as the white lingered for a few seconds too long.

Janis let out a small, amused huff and turned back once the system settings replaced the all-white initialization display. There was an error flashing at the edge of the screen about an unexpected shut down, but that was expected so she chose to ignore it for the meantime in favor of checking on the working cameras.

The hallways were empty as they usually were but just as Janis was about to tab out to check the recordings, Karen, Damian and Gretchen walked up from Shields into Navigations. She waited a while to see what the group would do next, but they didn’t spend too much time there before they went back to Shields.

“At least we know they’re sticking together and doing their tasks.” Janis muttered to herself, checking the other cameras for more movement until it was obvious that no one was in range to see.

Accessing the recordings was unreasonably difficult for some reason. She kept getting error messages and static screens when she tried to rewind the feed, when in usual circumstances it was as easy as a press of a button. Janis had the sinking feeling that something might have gotten broken in the hardware during the debris field fiasco. But that couldn’t be it though, she checked up on the system long before they stopped and even stayed around after, it was working fine both times; there were busted cameras but the system itself was doing okay.

It took a few more tries and a lot more error messages, but Janis managed to get a recording to play. She turned to the others and gestured to the monitors, “You guys wanna come watch?”

Aaron hopped off the table. “Sure.”

“Let me clean up.” Cady called, followed by shuffling and the panel cover closing. After a firm slap on the cover, she slipped into the room with them. Aaron held out his hand for her to take.

“Let’s get this murder mystery watch party started then.” Janis pressed play.

For a little while, she wasn’t even sure if she did press play or if the display froze again because nothing was happening. She pressed a different button to pull up the timer to confirm that, yes the recording was playing; at 1.25x speed too.

“Is this usually what you do?” Cady asked, sending Janis a little look that practically screamed _I’m sorry for you_.

Janis sighed. “Unfortunately.”

Aaron whistled lowly. “That’s a whole lot of nothing.”

“It really is,” Janis sighed again, “I wish there was a camera in the Cafeteria at least.”

Staring at hallways all day was a boring job, people were always in their stations anyway and the most that Janis usually saw on the job was the Commander and the Captain walking between Navigations and Administrations and Regina walking from Engine to Engine to Reactor. The other Crewmembers usually floated from room to room as was needed. To make the experience a little less boring for Cady and Aaron, Janis sped up the recording more. They’ll just have to pause to figure out who’s going where.

After the debris field, there’d been a call from the Captain to convene at the Cafeteria. Crew came out from their stations straight to the assembly. The Captain and Karen appeared in the Navigation hallways. The Commander, Cady, Damian and Gretchen appeared in the Administration hallway. Janis came out from the MedBay.

“Where were you, Aaron?” Cady asked.

“I was in Weapons with Shane. We needed more than one pair of hands on the blasters.” He turned back to the monitor and frowned when he realized there were only four cameras active. “Wait, we’re not appearing?”

Janis just shrugged and skipped over the time they were at the meeting to up until all of the Crewmembers left. “3 cameras are busted right now.”

While the hallways were empty, Janis appeared coming out of Security heading down to the Right Engine. It was when Shane had called for someone to help in Storage. Nothing else happened until she and Aaron finished up and headed to the Cafeteria. A little after Karen’s brief appearance the alarm blared once before the recording cut off into static.

That…That’s never happened before.

Janis started pressing buttons in an attempt to bring the video back, but all that got her were error messages and a key smash warning. Was the recording corrupted, or did the recording function just stop in the middle of the alarm?

“Well something’s fucked up with the system,” Janis grumbled, tabbing out of the video to check on the other recordings. Nothing seemed out of place, all the past days had been dated and archived properly, except the system wasn’t recording _right now_ as it should. Nothing was corrupted, instead, “the recording function is definitely busted.”

She turned back at Cady and Aaron, the three of them sharing a worried look when they realized that the potential Panopticon effect under the watchful eye of the cameras had just been rendered useless. Now, unless someone was in watching in Security, they were just going to have to depend on people’s honesty.

“Okay,” Janis began, taking a breath to steady herself, “no one can know that the security system isn’t recording, that doesn’t leave this room. We don’t need the Impostors using that to their advantage. If they ask why we were here, the power cord snapped and Cady had to fix it. Are we clear?”

Cady and Aaron nodded quickly. It wasn’t like they had much of a choice when their survival might be on the line.

“Good.” Janis turned back to the system.

Silence rang out oppressively in the room as they struggled with the weight of the situation. Every little thing they couldn’t fix on board the ship translated directly to fewer chances of getting out of this situation alive. All of them would have to be very careful with what they would and wouldn’t say. Staying alive long enough to get home and set up a funeral would be the least they could do for whichever one of them the Impostor had claimed.

“What do we do now?” Aaron whispered, looking back and forth between the other two.

Cady took in a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut, struggling to get the right words out. “We move on.”

“What?”

“She’s right.” Janis interrupts, pushing her chair away from the desk. As much as it pained her to leave the others unguarded, leaving to do more work was the best course of action. They needed to be operational enough to get to the closest inhabited planet which meant they all had to do their part in the repairs. “We have to pretend like nothing’s wrong. Whatever tasks we have here are done, and we have to keep going.”

Aaron looked towards the system, rolling his jaw. Janis could practically see the gears in his head working as he thought it through. “I guess. Where do we go now then?”

“Let’s see who the closest group is, we can keep an eye on them if the cameras can’t.” Janis glances back at the system. “Hopefully someone appears soon.”

Just in time, Regina and Shane appeared, coming out of the Cafeteria and going straight into MedBay. “Perfect. There were samples in there I needed to have analyzed.”

Aaron stepped aside as Janis got off the seat and started to leave the room with Cady, but he seemed hesitant to leave the room, “Shouldn’t someone stay here to watch the cameras at least?”

“Do you really want to be alone with an Impostor in the ship?” Cady asked, raising a brow at him.

“Not really.” He answered awkwardly and followed.

Janis spared one last glance at the monitor before it shut itself off from inactivity. In the Admin hallway camera, the Captain walked out of Administrations and into the Cafeteria. What for, she wasn’t sure. It left him and the Commander alone and wasn’t it an order to stay together? It must’ve been important if he left.

“Janis.” Cady called from up the hall.

“Coming, sorry!” Janis slipped out of the room as the screen flickered to black.


	4. Tasks Completed: 20%

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Comms crew try to solve some problems

Since Shields wasn’t receiving any power at all for Karen to do her job properly, she, Gretchen and Damian headed down into Communications to continue with their work. It was a little terrifying to go down into a hallway that led directly into Storage, but that was where they had to be and it wasn’t like they were _going_ into Storage.

Just as they were about to turn into the room, Karen noticed Captain Duvall down the hall in Storage. “Sir?”

The Captain paused mid-step and looked over to them. He was wearing the space helmet and oxygen tank that completed the uniform, and had Karen not been working closely with him in Navigations, she would have thought he was about to abandon them. He asked, “Are you going in to fix comms?”

“Yes sir,” Damian answered, “what’s with the…” he gestured to the complete uniform.

“The storage room is a health hazard right now,” the Captain said, grimacing as he nodded to the far side of Storage, “I’m going to open the hatch and get it out as per protocol. Be ready for the alarm to sound.”

The three of them paled, not pleased to know that the alarm was going to go off, but grateful that they’d at least received a warning before it happened. Captain Duvall pressed a button on his tablet and the doors to Storage shut, finishing the short exchange and leaving them to slip into Comms.

Damian took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s just get through work.” He walked over to his station by the door, flipping open the monitors and pressing a few buttons as the system buzzed awake. “Something’s funky with the comms. Did you hear Commander Norbury earlier? It shouldn’t be that fuzzy.”

“It didn’t sound fuzzy earlier when Regina was asking for someone to bring her food, so it couldn’t have been caused by the alarm.” Gretchen added, moving to her own system at the back wall, tugging Karen along with her.

Communications wasn’t a room Karen went to frequently despite how close Shields was, she did come every now and again to drop off little snacks and trinkets for Gretchen. She remembers thinking that it was an odd room, constantly covered in sticky notes for orders or tasks that needed to be done, with one ordinary desk in the corner with papers always scattered around. Looking at it now though, there were far more switches and screens than what she was used to, dotting the wall alongside dials and buttons that looked old compared to the Navigations panels. Had it not been for the consequence of potentially cutting everyone off and putting everyone in danger, all those switches and buttons would be very fun to flip and press.

Damian muttered something under his breath and put a pair of headphones on, starting to turn dials and stare at the wiggly line moving up and down on one of the monitors. “In-ship comms look and sound like they’re working fine. Should we troubleshoot?”

He and Gretchen started talking about things Karen really didn’t understand, something about hardware and software troubleshooting and testing signals. She couldn’t help but think that there was a much simpler explanation. “Maybe the Commander’s communicator is broken?”

The silence and blank expression on Damian’s face made her uncomfortable. She didn’t know him well enough to know if she should be worried about it, but it was nerve wracking for some reason even when she knew it really shouldn’t be. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t be.” Gretchen cooed, lightly touching Karen’s arm. “He’s just processing, it’s a great suggestion, but we can’t really test the Commander’s comm right now. We’ll have to find a workaround to that.”

Damian nodded quickly, the spark in his eye reappearing, “Yeah, sorry I-”

The alarm blared suddenly and doused the room in a red light. Karen squeaked and dropped to the floor, shutting her eyes tight and pressing her hands against her ears in a vain effort to keep the lights and noise out of her head. Tears pricked at her eyes when it felt like the red seeped through her eyelids, curling into a ball in a vain attempt to make it all feel even a little but safer for her psyche. Every wail of the siren drowned out the already deafening pounding of her heart.

It was only for a few seconds, but it was a few seconds too long. When the red light disappeared and the ship fell back into silent humming, it was like nothing happened at all. Damian was on his feet, headphones slipped off his head, staring at the lights overhead while Gretchen sat frozen in her chair, fingers shaking on the metal surface of her station, breathing like she’d just ran a marathon. Karen’s heart was still beating painfully fast in her chest and she was heaving so hard it hurt. Even though she knew it was coming, it wasn’t a pleasant experience, especially in these circumstances.

Their communicators buzzed to life and Regina’s voice came through, utterly panicked with the sound of other people talking in the background. “Excuse me, but _what the fuck_.”

“Regina,” the Commander warned, “language.”

Even through her own labored breathing and the waning panic, Karen registered the difference in the way their voices came through. Regina’s end had some static to it, a bit of noise in her otherwise clear voice. The Commander’s was fuzzy, with much more prominent static to it even though she only said two things. Not enough static that it made her sound indistinguishable or a robot, but just enough that it took a second to understand what she was trying to say.

“The alarm was for clearing out the storage area.” Captain Duvall said, as clear as Regina’s voice. “It was authorized. Return to your tasks.”

The three of them in the room took a collective breath to collect themselves, thankful for the distraction. “I don’t understand how Regina gets away with that.” Damian said, sitting back on his chair and picking his headphones up off the floor.

“There aren’t many engine and reactor engineers. They can’t dismiss her when there’s so few with her skillset.” Gretchen answered, looking like she was still in a daze, slipping to the floor to sit beside Karen and lean her head on her shoulder. “Regina knows that.”

He huffed and shakily went back to work, spinning a dial making the wiggly line on one of the monitors slower. Karen watched him work while she ran her hands through Gretchen’s hair to calm them down. To make up for Gretchen’s inactivity at her station, or maybe just to distract them from what just happened, Karen brought up the short exchange over comms. “So we can agree that Commander Norbury’s communicator is broken, right?”

“Maybe, do you-” Damian looked over, “-do you remember if the Commander sounded fuzzy earlier, when Regina was asking for someone to get her something to eat? I can’t remember what she sounded like. Maybe it got damaged during the debris field; just more broken equipment.”

Gretchen nuzzled closer to Karen’s side, her fingers were still now, “I can’t remember either. Weren’t we busy trying to get an outbound signal to ping?”

“Yeah, the Captain told us to send a repair notice.” He pressed a button and held one of the headphone’s little speakers up to his ear. “Still no luck on that one. It’d suck if we had to go outside to fix a broken antenna.”

Karen scrunched up her nose. She’d had to do a spacewalk with Regina before on a different ship to fix a damaged section of the shields and it was anything but pleasant. If you weren’t careful with your tools, it was bound to float away into deep space and be part of debris floating around. To this day, Karen misses her favorite flathead screwdriver.

Gretchen and Damian were continuing their conversation when it was cut off again by Regina’s voice coming through the communicators with what sounded like Aaron and Shane bickering in the background. “We’re going to Electric with Cady. Do any other stations need power redirected in?”

“I need power up in Shields.” Karen answered, nudging Gretchen to sit up.

“Got it. Anyone else?” Nobody else chimed in, not even the Commander joined to chastise Regina. “No one? Great, bye!”

“Regina sure does know how to interrupt a conversation.” Damian sighed, putting the headphones back over his ears and turning to one of the monitors of his station again. “Well, what do you two think we should fix first? Should we fix the Commander’s broken communicator? Or should we run a troubleshoot to gauge how utterly alone and fucked we are in deep space?”

Karen let out a little laugh as she got to her feet, helping Gretchen up with her. “I vote troubleshoot.”

“Same.” Gretchen muttered.

“That’s two for deep space. If we have to fix something out there, you better be ready for a spacewalk.” He tried to sound upbeat, Karen could tell, but it sounded a little too much like he was trying to force his usual jokes and charisma. The situation they were currently in had him shaken up more than he wanted to let on.

She walked over and patted his head with as much affection as she could muster, even he needed someone to tell him it was all okay when his best friend was on the other side of the ship during a bad time. Damian seemed confused at first but he chuckled after a few. “Thanks Karen.”

“No problem.” She gave him one more pat before moving towards the door, Gretchen following closely behind. “Time to get power in Shields.”

Karen was already in the hall when they noticed that Damian didn’t get out of his chair.

“Damian,” Gretchen called, “aren’t you coming?”

He looked up from his work, about to say something when his hand accidentally turned a little too hard on the dial. Whatever it was, he messed up, nearly flinging himself away from his station, ripping the headphones away from his ears. Karen cringed when she heard the buzzing sound coming out of them from where she stood. That was going to need a fix.

“I’ll have to catch up now, I’m afraid.” Damian grumbled, readjusting the dial slightly. “It won’t be too long to get this sorted out anyway. Can one of you guard the hallway for me while you’re there?”

Gretchen nodded slowly, “Will do.”

The two of them were only going to be down the hall in Shields, but leaving him alone didn’t sit right with Karen. Even with Gretchen watching out for him, there might still be chances that the Impostor slips in on the off chance they might get distracted. On the other hand, Karen had to do her part as a crewmember and turn on and prime the shields to protect the ship from getting hit with whatever things were floating in space.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to just wait here with you?” Karen asked.

Damian’s smile was as gentle and reassuring as he could, still slipping his headphones on after turning the dial more. “I’m sure. I’ll be alright, Karen. Now go get the shields working again. We don’t want anything hitting our antennas, or we’re actually going to have to go on a spacewalk.”

It didn’t completely calm her down, but it was just enough to get her cautiously leave the room. Karen spared a glance down the hall into Storage, freezing when she found the doors unlocked and open, only aiding to scare her even more. She knew she didn’t have to be scared anymore because the Captain already cleared it up. Still, the memory of what was _in there_ was horrible, all bright red and heavy when it settled in her mind.

It took Gretchen’s gentle hand in hers to break her from the odd trance staring down the hall put her under. “It’s okay,” she cooed, “we don’t ever have to go in there if we don’t need to.”

Karen melted, taking a deep breath to calm herself before turning around to walk up the hall into Shields. It was okay. She was okay. She would have to be. She had a job to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the chapters a long while ago and couldn't go back to them because college work for Oct and Nov have been brutal. I apologize if some parts are stiff, I haven't read anything but coursework for a while.
> 
> Also I couldn't get over that some characters are going to die. oh no


End file.
